Archive for April, 2010|Monthly archive page

After close to two decades of lashing out with insults, collective guilt-mongering and other outrageously offensive behavior, Robin Edgar is now claiming that it’s not really him. On his latest blog post, he insists that “The Emerson Avenger” is a “caricature” and separate “persona” from how he really is, and that he is really a very “restrained” and “respectful” individual.

In other words, we shouldn’t take him seriously. Oh, wait, he wants us to take him seriously, just not his “deliberately rude and offensive” Emerson Avenger “persona.”

Really, Mister Edgar, if you expect people to take your grievances seriously, how does it help to be so demanding, insulting and obnoxious as to warrant calling it a “caricature”? Doesn’t it make more sense to be your supposedly “respectful” and “restrained” self, so that people will be more inclined to listen to you?

At the very least, Robin Edgar’s using such an outrageous “front” shows very poor judgment and social skills. At worst, it is yet another example of how he tries to justify his behavior. We are once again back to wondering what to believe about him, only now he wants us to believe that there’s more than one “him”.

This past weekend, Robin Edgar attended the UUA Board meeting’s discussion on Excellence in Ministry, which he then covered on his blog.

Technically he was an observer, but he certainly wasn’t sitting there. As with so many UU meetings and events he has attended, he again tried to make it all about him. So while board and staff tried to talk about how to make sure the next generation of UU ministers are both qualified and supported, he constantly raised the question of “clergy misconduct.”

Apparently, Robin Edgar believes that, if an offending minister can be rehabilitated, and if a minister can appeal an adverse decision of the Ministerial Fellowship Committee, then any and all complaints of alleged clergy misconduct should also be renewed as many times as the person complaining deems necessary. Forget whether it has merit, or whether there is evidence to support the complaint. If ministers can get a second chance, then in his mind anyone with an axe to grind should be able to swing it again and again until they finally get what they want.

Perhaps Robin Edgar doesn’t realize that not every complaint has merit, just as not every defrocked minister deserves to be reinstated. Perhaps he’s never heard of the concept of “prosecutorial harassment” – of using laws or regulations to go after someone over and over, distorting judicial due process and the pursuit of justice into a relentless demand for vengeance, just as destructive as the obsessive stalker going after the woman who rejected him (how dare she, I’ll show her!)

Perhaps Robin Edgar doesn’t really care about fairness, proof or balance. Perhaps all he really cares about is winning, of fulfilling his warped and grandiose fantasies.

We ourselves have our own criticisms of how the UUA has handled clergy misconduct, especially how it has dealt with the victims of such misconduct. But we also know that justice is about more than confronting and punishing others for hurting your feelings. It’s certainly not about browbeating others to get what you want, just because you believe that you can’t possibly be wrong.

Bad enough Robin Edgar has to fill his blog posts and comments on other blogs with so much rage and insults. Or that they are so incredibly long and self-centered. But if all that is not a sign of obsession, how about how turgid and repetitive his writing is?

Robin Edgar does show flashes of intelligence and imagination. Not frequently, though. He repeats so many hackneyed phrases, culled from out-of-date pop-culture references, you have to wonder what’s going on. “Ooh, ooh! That sounds good! I’ll use that catchy little phrase in my next blog post…” And the next blog post, and the next blog post, and pretty much every blog post he can fit it into.

Notice how he constantly asks, “Will <selected UU> Finally <do something Robin Edgar wants>?” As we’ve said before, aside from demanding an official apology, he’s never been clear what exactly he wants — and with his history of rejecting apologies on the grounds of not thinking them “sincere” even that specific demand is specious. So he keeps rewriting the question, keeps demanding what he calls “restorative justice” without ever spelling out what exactly he’s looking for.

Years ago, there was a show on US television called Less than Perfect. It hasn’t been around for a long, long time, but Robin Edgar is so fixated on the phrase, and the variant less than excellent, that he uses it every chance he gets. It’s hard to find any of his posts or comments where he doesn’t find a chance to use it.

Let’s not forget the comic movie My Big Fat Greek Wedding. It was popular enough at the time to spawn a TV series, but neither has been all that big for some time now. Except on the blog and brain of Robin Edgar, where he uses “Big Fat” so often that it starts to get boring.

And it’s not enough to talk about one of his favorite scapegoats, the UUA’s Ministerial Fellowship Committee. Any mention of this group – often added to any mention of the UUA – must be prefaced with the snarky description very aptly named to the point of compulsion.

Robin Edgar has been asked by readers why he is so verbose and redundant. He claims it’s to get more Google hits (which makes sense, since he’s so keen on getting as much attention as possible, even putting up a post simply to report the number of Google hits “The Emerson Avenger” had gotten). But even that doesn’t explain how he uses so many phrases so often. No, such tiresome use of cliches speaks of a man who fixates on things and cannot let go – including his own hypocrisy of admitting to being rude and offensive, then refusing to accept that such obnoxious and vindictive behavior has actually hurt people, often for no reason than for refusing to embrace his obsessive need for control and attention.